


process of healing

by Sumi



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Step-Sibling Incest, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 06:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13607256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/pseuds/Sumi
Summary: It's been a month since the loop restart and Alex hasn't heard a peep from the Sunken. Rather than relief, it fills her with dread.





	process of healing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



After Alex woke up on the ferry for the umpteenth time, she knew the reset would be coming eventually. It happened on the whim of ghosts who loved their games. Their stupid, childish, mindfucking games that left Alex more than a little rattled. So, Alex prepared herself for the inevitable.

Alex considered herself a pro at surviving these time loops. Each new one numbed Alex just a little more. She wondered when it would reach the point where she felt nothing at all. Maybe Alex would lose her humanity like the Sunken. It seemed more like a possibility with every new reset.

Days faded into weeks and weeks into a month. The longest Alex once waited for a reset was two months so the lack of reset so far wasn’t concerning. It was what else Alex wasn’t experiencing; no whispers and taunts from the Sunken or the extreme bouts of deja vu. Alex should’ve been happy, but she felt the exact opposite. 

The fear of the Sunken pulling the literal ground out from underneath Alex’s feet remained a serious threat. Alex thought of being stuck floating in that void of nothingness with and felt her stomach churn. All she’d have to keep her company would be those ghosts and the crackling of the radio. Neither helped with the whole ‘I’m becoming less human’ thing she had going on.

There was this spoken rule that what happened on Edwards Island stayed on Edwards Island so even if Alex’s friends noticed, they didn’t say anything. Alex tried to get everyone to take a blood oath, but only Ren joined her on that one. Either way, it worked out. She didn’t want to talk about it. Ren and the others had no idea about all the other loops or that in some of them, Michael had lived.

Out of everyone to _not_ stick to the attempted blood oath was, of course, Jonas. He picked the night of Ren’s not-going-away-to-college party to bring it up. Alex had ducked out onto the back porch, trying her best to do so in a stealth-like manner. Since Alex didn’t have a stealthy bone in her body, this failed miserably.

Alex heard the door open and cast a quick glance over her shoulder. “Guess you found me. Quickest game of hide-and-go-seek, ever.”

“Well, Ren’s backyard doesn’t make for a good hiding spot,” Jonas said wryly. “A better spot to hide might be in the disaster zone he calls his room.”

“Dude, for Ren, what it looks like now is actually an improvement. Back when we were in middle school, the mess was twice as bad and smelled like something actually died in there.”  
The discussion of Ren was a safe topic. Alex figured Jonas intended to start the conversation off in a light-hearted manner. It was half amusing and scary how easy it had become for them to talk. Jonas had immediately jumped off Alex’s hide and seek comment. He seemed to be lulling Alex into a comfortable place before probably dropping a bomb of a question. If she were Jonas, Alex would’ve done the exact same thing.

“Do you want to go back in to test that theory?” Jonas asked, shifting a bit closer to her so they were standing side by side.

Alex shook her head, making a mental note that Jonas smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She’d been on him to quit for months now, but right now Alex found the smell almost comforting. “No, I’d rather just stay here and wait for the ball to drop in the fucked up insanity that rules my life.”

He stared at her, brows furrowed. “I know we’re dealing with all this aftermath shit from the night-that-shall-not-be-named so it’s not like I expect everything to be peachy fucking keen... ”

“But,” Alex said, finishing the sentence for Jonas after he started trailing off.

Jonas’s mouth turned down in the beginnings of a frown. “There’s something more going on with you, Alex. You don’t seem happy we all made it out without ending up as meat suits for a bunch of angry ghosts. Shit, you never even surprised.”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to be surprised when it’s not the first time,” Alex muttered.

She never spoke about the repeated loops before. Alex saw no point when everything kept repeating over and over again. Sometimes questions were raised about Alex’s behavior depending on the loop. This time was so different from the others, however, Alex let her guard down. 

The Sunken were never quiet, so something had to be up. Alex just couldn’t figure out what their game was this time and it scared the shit out of her. It felt good to talk to someone about it. Even if she were being vague as fuck.

Jonas winced. “Yeah, it seemed like you’ve been through it once or twice.”

At this, Alex couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. “I stopped counting after it reached the hundreds. Never was any good at math, anyway. I’m sure Ren’s mentioned that once or twice by now.”

A silence formed between them, but it was a far cry from the comfortable ones Alex usually shared with Jonas. She wished Jonas would say something; anything really. As long as it in English, Alex would take it.

“A heavy sense of deja vu always lingered whenever I thought about… the-events-that-shall-not-be-named. I guess I know why now.” Jonas kept his tone light and casual, which Alex appreciated. She preferred something to focus on other than the crippling anxiety over the insane ghost posse pulling the rug out from under her at any second. “Also, Ren has mentioned you’re both pretty bad at math on at least three separate occasions now.”

Alex snorted, attempting to bump her shoulder against Jonas. Given the height disparity between them, Alex only managed to bump shoulder to rib cage with Jonas. Still, it had the desired effect, making the situation less tense-- if only for a moment. 

She both wanted to embrace the moment of relaxation with Jonas and abandon it entirely. The internal conflict provided the beginning stages of a headache. It was the cherry on top of an entirely anxiety-filled sundae.

“Is the plan to just sit out here until… whatever you expect to happen, happens... Or preferably doesn’t happen?”

The tone Jonas used was cautious. He used every precaution to not raise Alex’s stress, but she felt them rising anyway. Definitely not Jonas’s fault.

Alex blamed the Sunken. She always blamed the Sunken.

After a moment of quiet, Alex reluctantly nodded. “I’ve tried to fix these fucking time loops a hundred times. This time it seemed like it worked, but so much failure tends to dampen anyone’s hopes for success.”

During the most recent reset, Alex made another last-ditch attempt to contact the other Alex, the _original_ one while stuck in the other place. The slowly-losing-her humanity-version of Alex needed to make this specific version of herself understand everything and most importantly _remember_. Somehow, Alex’s half-baked plan must’ve worked. This was figuratively speaking because Ren hogged all the magic cookies no matter what how many times everything reset. 

When it finally hit Alex that she may have solved the loops entirely, her first thought was that the Sunken had simply grown bored of their game. They were prone to playing twisted versions hangman and I, Spy so it was possible. Yet, here Alex stood with Jonas in a mix of comfortable and awkward silence while Ren’s party raged on behind them.

Alex looked over her shoulder at the bench shoved on the far corner of the porch. She glanced at Jonas who followed her gaze and moved to sit down without another word. The action was repeated by Alex who could do nothing but wait and see if the loops would finally come to an end.

Alex woke up a few hours later with the sun shining in her face and a cramp forming in her neck. She blinked, shifting into an upright position before looking over at Jonas. He was still asleep, which Alex thought to remedy by gently nudging Jonas in the ribs. A flurry of butterflies in the pit of her stomach made themselves known because of the close proximity to Jonas. Begrudgingly, Alex ignored this.

“Hey Garbage Snowman, we ended up sleeping out here all night. Does your neck feel as fucked up as mine does?”

Jonas made a noise that sounded like a mixture of a yawn and chuckle. “Yeah, it wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but exhaustion is a thing so…”

“So is hunger.” She made the decision of announcing this seconds before her stomach began to growl. “Let’s go inside and grab some breakfast before heading home. I’m starving.”

Inside Ren’s house was a disaster. It looked better than his bedroom but still could do with about five rounds of TLC. Alex ignored it in favor of rummaging through the cupboards for a box of pop tarts. She knew Ren had to have some stashed in the kitchen. Poptarts were Ren’s drug of choice and Alex was in need of a fix. 

“Aha, found the goods!” Alex plucked them out of the cabinet and then looked over at Jonas. “We can go now. I’ve found what I came for.”

Jonas just chuckled.

~*~

The Sunken continued to remain MIA for another month followed by two. Alex began to accept it might actually be over, but remained wary. She’d been down this road so many times before only to be proven wrong in the end.

Everyone seemed to be slowly moving on and patching up the wounds caused by the events on Edwards Island, while Alex felt stuck. It wasn’t like Alex didn’t want to get past all this bullshit. There was a heavy feeling of desperation to get on with her life, but the fear kept Alex from even just thinking about the future.

Clarissa had left and moved to NYC for college with Nona following her best friend. Ren stayed local, missing Nona terribly and pursuing a long distance relationship with her. Jonas also remained local, working but not attending college quite yet. Everyone was working towards something; except Alex.

Her mom wasn’t pushing Alex to get a job or decide on a college. She just wanted Alex to get out of the house and do something other than mope around the house. When Jonas asked if she wanted to go for a drive one evening, Alex suspected he was in cahoots with her mom. Of course, Alex had no intention of complaining about spending a couple hours driving around their dinky little town with Jonas. It was Jonas, after all.

Alex would always consider Ren her best friend. They’d been BFF’s since infancy, but she and Jonas had definitely bonded to the point where he was a close second. Well, that and her step-brother, but Alex rarely referred to Jonas as such. Whether it be out loud or in her head. The step-brother label didn’t fit. It hadn’t for a long time and this didn’t bother Alex at all. It was something else entirely. 

A fear of a sudden reset kept Alex from acting on these feelings. There hadn’t been a sign another reset was close by since this one began. Alex wanted to think maybe it was over, but it proved impossible to force herself to get over that particular and very real fear.

Despite all this negative shit bubbling up inside her, Alex enjoyed the drive. Her and Jonas talked about everything and nothing, culminating in the two collapsing on the steps of the front porch. The house lights were off, indicating her mom and Jonas’s dad were out. Alex nearly breathed out a sigh of relief. She was not in the right frame of mind for hovering parents asking all sorts of questions.

“So…anything?” Jonas asked suddenly in the worst attempt in acting and sounding casual.

Alex sighed. “Not a peep or creepy whisper out of them. I think I preferred when they weren’t giving me the silent treatment.”

“If they were giving you the silent treatment it means this is all another fucked up game they concocted..” Jonas sighed. “Alex, you don’t really believe it’s over.”

“... is that a question or statement?”

“Call it more of an observation.”

She leaned against Jonas, resting her head against his shoulder. “I can’t move on with my life when there’s a chance I’ll have to do this all the fuck over again.”

Jonas sighed again, but this time more heavily. “You might have stopped it for good, Alex.”

For awhile, Alex just sat there, considering Jonas’s words. He made a good point, but it was always best to test a theory before accepting it as the truth. Alex’s way of testing this theory was sitting straight up and pulling Jonas down for a kiss. Rather than pulling away like Alex was afraid he might, Jonas kissed back.

They only parted because of a pesky little thing called oxygen. Alex blinked, closing her eyes and waiting for any sign of the Sunken. A minute passed, followed by two. Nothing happened, but Alex put her finger to her lips, indicating she wanted Jonas to not say anything for the time being. She had to be absolutely sure.  
After an hour, Alex finally spoke. “I don’t hear them. Usually, they’d be taunting me by now… speaking of which, if I’m going to do this moving on shit, I should probably find out where we stand Garbage Snowman.”

Jonas snorted. “Alex, we don’t have to jump right into anything.”

“Unless it’s into bed,” she teased.

“I think we should get to know each other better before we take it that far.”

Alex laughed, shifting back to her former position with her head on Jonas’s shoulder. “And there’s the issue of telling the rents. Though for some strange reason, I feel like my mom already suspects something.”

“I can’t say the same about my dad. He’s never been that intuitive,” Jonas answered with a shrug.

“Well, Mom can break it to him then; providing I don’t wake back up on that fucking ferry tomorrow.” Alex wanted to believe everything was all right. She really did, but since Michael died, Alex had become a glass half empty kind of person. “So… sleepover in my room tonight? I have snacks.”

When Jonas chuckled, Alex knew she had her answer. The only thing left was to figure out where the hell she’d put the snacks in the first place.


End file.
